Black Church, Part One

Okay, White people, listen up! This is one of those lessons where you have to realize that you don’t understand nothing about what is going on here, and you need a Black person to interpret it for you…

Got it?

What you’re about to see is as dark and mysterious as any jungle you could ever imagine….

Without the heat, of course.

(Black folks can’t stand it when the a.c. is out, trust me. If you ever get in a situation where there are too many niggas around, find a way to cut off the a.c. Niggas leave, problem solved.)

I’m talking about Church.

Black Church.

Oh, don’t worry. You’re safe here. To be honest, we kinda like it when you show up.

Well, 2 or 3 of you, anyway.

5 or 6 of y’all, and we get kinda nervous, and we start mumbling schit, like “Did Reverend Kimble forget to pay the note again?”

But a couple of y’all is good, adds a bit of flavor to the mix, not to mention it gives us a new source of entertainment, other than Sister Krystelle getting’ happy with that too-short dress.

She really ought’a quit that.

Mother Brown’s blood pressure rises up every time Kryst gets to shakin’ in her pew.

“She know she know better than that! She just tryin’ to catch po’ Rev’s eye with that short dress! Humph! One mo’ inch higher, and she be needin’ lipstick!”

Mother’s right about that, though. I know that heifer’s cat got to be freezing! Maybe that’s why she be jumping, trying to warm her azz up.

Anyway, we be watching when y’all come in. We know y’all gonna sit together, like there’s safety in numbers.

Forget that.

Plenty enough of us to beat y’alls collective azzes, plus any cops that show up. And besides, we got our alibis all straight, trust me. We’d be sitting in the courthouse like The Color Purple:

“Yo Honor, suh, we wuz just sittin’ in chu’ch, just praisin’ de Lawd, bless His Holy Name (Hallylooooyah! Thank ya, Jesus!), we don’t know where them Whi’ folks came from!”

Yes, we saw you come in and sit down, with that possum-caught-in-the-headlights look on your face. We sas you, and we kinda sympathized with you, until….

Yes, there is an “until.”

Until you started to clap.

This brings me to Rule #1—Thou Shalt Not Clap.

You hear?

You may nod your head to the beat, and softly drum your index finger on the pew—but that’s it! You may even gently wave your prerequisite MLK funeral home cardboard fan (soon to be replaced by the Barack Obama model) if you want to, but that’s it!

(A little-known fact: Most Anglo-Saxons have a defective genome, patboone301, that renders them incapable of maintaining more than 3 seconds of syncopated rhythm. All that time shivering in the caves of Europe will do that to a people.)

We’re not saying don’t enjoy the music—jam all you want.

Just keep the jam to yourself.

Trust me, you’re already in the awkward position of being “The White Boy Who Came To Church,” you don’t want to add “And Clapped Off Beat, You Know How They Do” to your title.

Hey, you don’t have to listen if you don’t want to. I’ll be the first one pointing and laughing.